ESPN’s Wilbon: Baltimore Reminiscent of Summers of ’66-68

During Tuesday’s broadcast of “Pardon the Interruption” on ESPN, co-host Mike Wilbon shared his thoughts on the Baltimore riots, which have caused the Baltimore Orioles to postpone games and even close their stadium to the public to play their game on Wednesday against the Chicago White Sox.

According to Wilbon, the riots happening in Baltimore now remind him of the riots after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

“I went down memory lane very quickly and I hope what I’m about to say doesn’t happen, but I started thinking about the summers of 1966 and the summer of 1968 in the United States of America and you have to be fairly old to remember those summers and the frustration and the pain that was felt across many communities, most of them urban, and the unrest which followed.”

He continued, saying, “This is not a prediction, this is not a forecast but that’s what I thought of and the great disparity of wealth and poverty versus wealth, in Baltimore in particular, and all of the indicators that point to the frustration arising from that. There are so many things here and I just hope it’s not like those summers of 1966, 1967 and 1968 but I fear it is.”